Wilhelm Krichbaum

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Max Schimmelpfennig
Willi Krichbaum (3 Bilder).jpg
Birth name Wilhelm Christian Johann Krichbaum
Birth date 7 May 1896
Place of birth Wiesbaden, Province of Hesse-Nassau, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Death date 4 April 1957 (aged 60)
Place of death Oberpfaffenhofen, Bavaria, West Germany
Allegiance  German Empire
 Weimar Republic
 National Socialist Germany
 West Germany
Service/branch Iron Cross of the Luftstreitkräfte.png Imperial German Army
Freikorps Flag.jpg Freikorps
SA-Logo.png Sturmabteilung
Polizei in der Weimarer Republik.jpg Police
Flag Schutzstaffel.png SS
Balkenkreuz.jpg Heer
Organisation Gehlen.jpg Gehlen Organization
Sankt-Georgs-Medaille des Bundesnachrichtendienstes.jpg Bundesnachrichtendienst
Rank SS-Oberführer und Oberst der Polizei
Service number SS rune.png #107,039
NSDAP #5,820,987
Commands held Chef der Geheimen Feldpolizei (GFP)
Battles/wars World War I
World War II
Awards Iron Cross
Wound Badge (1918)
War Merit Cross
Relations ∞ 1938 Margarethe Dürlich
Other work Forester

Wilhelm "Willi" Christian Johann Krichbaum (7 May 1896 – 4 April 1957) was a German officer, a veteran of two world wars, an early member of the NSDAP, the head of the Geheime Feldpolizei (secret military field police) and a prominent member of the German military intelligence.

Life

The men of the GFP led a hybrid existence in their function: they were subordinate to the High Command of the Wehrmacht and at the same time belonged to Heinrich Himmler's SS security apparatus. The entire leadership and officer level did not consist of military personnel, but of field police officers seconded from the ranks of Reinhard Heydrich's security police. According to Wilhelm Krichbaum in a 1946 affidavit before the International Military Tribunal, no more than eight percent of these officers came from the ranks of the Gestapo. Real criminal investigators were used for the job much more frequently.

In 1936, the future role of the field police was defined in the "Handbook of Modern Military Science" as follows: "Special police for war purposes. During the war, they continue the activities of the political police." This special role was expanded again five years later. In the war against the Soviet Union, the Secret Field Police also took on tasks that had previously been reserved for the Wehrmacht justice system. They were not responsible for "ordinary" law and order; that was the responsibility of the field police (Feldgendarmerie). An army service regulation from 24 July 1939 assigned the Secret Field Police the task of combating "endeavors that endanger the people and the state" in the area of ​​operations. And the investigators delivered – for the first time in covert operations during the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939 and during the Anschluss of Austria in 1938.
A 2nd Lieutenant and Feldpolizeisekretar (Field Police Secretary) of the GFP
During the Bombing of Dresden in World War II, Krichbaum's apartment was destroyed, he lost everything. His family survived in the house of his in-laws.
Page from Krichbaum's interrogation on 23 April 1947

After leaving school at Easter 1911, Krichbaum attended the Wiesbaden business school (Handelsschule) for seven more months. In 1912, he began his forestry apprenticeship with forester Geyer at the Luxembourg Finance Chamber. During the course of his apprenticeship, as requested, he was mainly employed in forest protection and, after his apprenticeship was over, he reported to the Kurhessisches Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 11 in Marburg of the Hesse-Kassel Army to complete his mandatory military service. He was initially deferred from military service and initially went to Upper Silesia as a forest protection officer.

On 2 August 1914, another source states 24 August, he immediately reported and was accepted as a volunteer with 1. Nassauisches Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 87. He took part in WWI with this regiment, later with the Reserve-Infanterie Regiment Nr. 223 and the Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 186, from 1916 to 1918 as a runner (Meldegänger), a military field policeman (Feldpolizist) as well as regimental and divisional shock troop leader (Stoßtruppführer). Unteroffizier Krichbaum was wounded three times and suffered severe gas poisoning once.

After demobilization, he joined the “Hessian-Thuringian Freikorps” on 1 December 1918, with which he took part in the fights against Spartacus in central Germany and in Munich. After the capture of Munich, the Freikorps took part in the suppression of the First Polish Uprising. The Freikorps then dissolved and he joined a defense organization of the Upper Silesian Self-Protection (Oberschlesischer Selbstschutz). As a liaison between his organization and the Baltic troops (Baltikumkämpfer), he was seriously wounded by a Soviet agent in December 1919 (shot in the heart's aorta, partially paralyzed on the left side).

After his restoration, he went to the occupied territory on behalf of the “Association of National-Minded Soldiers” (Verband nationalgesinnter Soldaten), where he was active in organizational matters. In 1921, he was an explosives technician in an “explosive technology office” in Frankfurt-Rödelheim, then, disguised as a traveling salesman, an official in the “Rhenane Territory Customs Committee” (Comité douane de Territoire Rhenane), in order to ensure supplies and border passage for the people of the counterintelligence service as instructed. When this position could no longer be maintained due to the attention of the French, he was deployed in the Merseburg area at the end of 1921 to monitor communist influences in the Leuna works.

From January 1922, he was again active against separatism in the Rhineland (Separatistenbewegung ), and from mid-1922, he was leader of a defense group during the unrest in central Germany. At the end of 1922, as a member of the Ehrhardt Brigade (Brigade Ehrhardt), he took over the Dresden Sturmabteilung and joined the Dresden local group of the NSDAP, which he belonged to until it was banned in November 1923. He took part in the NSDAP party congresses in 1923 in Munich, 1926 in Weimar, 1927 and 1929 as a delegate of his local group, although he did not rejoin the newly founded party in 1925.

Then he resigned from the brigade and subsequently belonged to the Wehrwolf, the Bund Oberland and the Bund Wiking in Saxony (adjutant of Manfred von Killinger from spring 1922 to 1925) until its dissolution in 1928.

From 1923, he also worked in civilian jobs in commercial and technical positions. From 1925, in automobile manufacturing and trading as a specialist for tractors and heavy goods vehicles (for military reasons). From 1926 onwards, he worked in national defense, where he led the Dresden Military Police Battalion (Feldjäger-Bataillon des Feldjägerkorps) of the Schwarze Reichswehr ("Black Reichswehr" was the unofficial name for extra-legal paramilitary formations) until it was disbanded. The Dresden Military Field Police Corps was called the "Damm Organization" for camouflage reasons. Individual members were temporarily called upon to provide personal protection for the Saxon government. In order to further distinguish himself militarily, Krichbaum attended several leadership courses organized by the Reichswehr until 1928, which he completed with an aptitude test in 1928. With this qualification, he was commissioned to help set up the "Saxony State Defense" organization, which was primarily concerned with issues of border protection towards Poland and Czechoslovakia.

In the course of the following years, he was an officer of the Ehrhardt Brigade, which continued to exist illegally (as of 1929 on order of Manfred von Killinger as his confidant and spy), with the knowledge and consent of the leading local authorities of the NSDAP until the Ehrhardt Brigade was integrated into the SS. After his appointment to the SD of the RFSS in 1933, he resigned from all other offices and associations. He served with the State Police Office of Saxony and as of 1 February 1935 with the Schutzpolizei (Protection Police). As of 1 June 1937, he served as a Grenzinspekteur (border inspector). As part of his duties with the border police, he was responsible for managing the political refugee checkpoints in the territory (thousands of people from Sudetenland and Austria, mainly National Socialists, had fled to Saxony as of 1934). His main focus was on ensuring the organization of counter-espionage in the border area.

On 1 May 1937, he rejoined the NSDAP. He later wrote, that he did this to please Himmler, who, when applying for a marriage license in early 1937, had expressed his surprise in writing that Krichbaum had not rejoined the party long ago. As early as 1938 he had to fulfill his first assignment as head of a regular operational group of the Secret Field Police. He had to carry out tasks as a secret field police group alongside the Wehrmacht units deployed in Austria (Anschluss). The same procedure took place a few months later in the Sudetenland and then in the rest of the Czech Republic (Rest-Tschechei). From September 1938, he served as Army Police Chief (Heerespolizeichef) of the Armed Forces High Command (OKW). After the German liberation of Prague, the Krichbaum Group was dissolved. He was appointed Heeresfeldpolizeichef im OKW (Army Field Police Chief in the OKW) on 20 August 1939. However, according to a letter from Bruno Streckenbach (RSHA) to RFSS (dated 6 January 1943), Krichbaum was not officially considered a member of the Wehrmacht, but rather a member of the "Wehrmacht entourage" (Wehrmachtsgefolges).

His next assignment as head of a secret field police group began on 28 August 1939 and he finally became head (Feldpolizeichef der Wehrmacht) of the entire Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP) on 1 May 1940, only days prior to the Western Campaign. The GFP was the Abwehr or counter-intelligence of the field army. It was subordinated to the Wehrmacht, not the SS. In addition to monitoring the troops, the GFP's area of ​​responsibility also included security against external enemies such as partisans or saboteurs. It was also responsible for countering enemy espionage. The SD was responsible for all Abwehr tasks in the civilian sector, the GFP for all in the military sector. Despite information to the contrary from the post-war period, there were rarely any overlaps. The GFP did not take orders from Gestapo or SD. This changed somewhat on 1 May 1942 in France, the GFP had to hand over saboteurs of the French resistance to the Sicherheitspolizei, since the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF Carl Oberg) was now responsible for these tasks.

Krichbaum also belonged to the Foreign/Defence Office (Amt Ausland/Abwehr) under Wilhelm Canaris, which was directly subordinate to the Chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, General Wilhelm Keitel. Canaris was arrested on 23 July 1944, in the aftermath of the "20 July Plot" against Hitler. The functions of the Abwehr were then fully absorbed by Amt VI, SD-Ausland under Walter Schellenberg, a sub-office of the RSHA, which was part of the SS. In the new structure of the “Troop Defense” department (Truppenabwehr) at the Wehrmacht Leadership Staff (Wehrmachtführungsstab; WFSt), Krichbaum retained responsibility for the management of the GFP.

In the last months of the war, the responsibilities of those operating in the combat zones increasingly merged. For example, an instruction from the Reich Security Main Office in January 1945 stated that members of the Gestapo, SD forces and military units were to work together locally and carry out both typical field police and military tasks. The GFP also had to capture deserters and bring them before military courts.

Post-WWII

On 2 May 1945, Krichbaum was captured and repeatedly interrogated. On 23 April 1947, he was extensively interrogated by Captain Walter H. Rapp, an American Army interrogator, who worked as part of Telford Taylor's prosecution team at the IMT and was afterwards appointed by Taylor as head of interrogation. It was Rapp who decided, Krichbaum would make a great witness for the prosecution. During the later interrogations in the denominational chamber proceedings in 1948, Krichbaum also stated under oath that his activity during the war had been limited to technical supervision and that there was no cooperation with the Einsatzgruppen. The denominational chamber proceedings on 23 July 1948 objectively determined that "the person concerned [...] was not a member of a criminal organization." The Nuremberg Military Tribunal, after careful examination of all facts, also confirmed in its verdict that the Secret Field Police (GFP) cannot be classified as a criminal organization. The Allies had similar units that acted far less squeamishly during the war.

In 1948, Krichbaum appeared as a witness in the trial against the High Command of the Wehrmacht. In the same year, Krichbaum (alias KRUG) was accepted into the Gehlen Organization (OG) and nominated for the vacant position of Chief of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). When that did not lead to success, as head of the General Agency L at the OG he recruited many former secret service agents from the NS era (among Friedrich Walz, b. 1910), including employees of his GFP institution, also Heinz Felfe in November 1951, who was later (1961) exposed as a KGB agent.[1] Anti-communist sentiment, esprit de corps and decades of intelligence practice provided a good foundation for the newly established West German intelligence service. Krichbaum later headed the BND network of sleeping or deep cover agents. He was widely regarded as a good boss who cared for everyone in his department.

Further memberships

  • National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV)
  • People's Association for Germanness Abroad (VDA)

Family

Wilhelm was the son of merchant Adam Krichbaum and his wife Johannette Caroline, née Kaltwasser. His mother died from the consequences of a severe cold after attending a ball only 34 years old. His father, who also had a farm, was kicked by a horse in the stall and died of internal injuries at age 43.

Wilhelm Krichbaum announced his engagement to Margarethe Dürlich (b. 17 April 1911 in Schönfeld near Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony) on 17 April 1930. The couple married on 29 January 1938. Their son Jürgen was born on 5 March 1939.

Promotions

Imperial German Army

  • Unteroffizier der Reserve (NCO/Corporal/Junior Sergeant of the Reserves)

Police

  • 1 July 1933 Feldjäger (State Police Office of Saxony)
    • 13 September 1933 in the rank of a SS-Sturmführer (without officially being a SS member)
  • 8 January 1934 Feldjäger-Hauptmann (Captain)
  • 1 February 1935 Hauptmann der Schutzpolizei (Captain of the Protection Police)
  • 1 June 1937 Grenzinspekteur (border inspector) South-East based in Dresden
    • With this area of ​​responsibility he belonged to the Gestapa (Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt) in Dresden, Department III
    • 7 November 1938 Officially taken over as a Beamter (civil servant) in the Secret State Police Saxony (Gestapa)
  • 21 May 1941 Oberst der Polizei (Colonel of the Police)

SS

Civil Service

  • 4 November 1938 Regierungs- und Kriminalrat (Government and Criminal Councilor)
  • 5 April 1940 Oberregierungs- und Kriminalrat (Senior Government and Criminal Councilor)

Awards and decorations

Writings

  • Die Geheime Feldpolizei, 1947/48 (monograph on behalf of the American occupying forces; Counter Intelligence Corps [CIC])

Sources

References

  1. ↑ Felfe is said to have betrayed a total of 15,000 secret transactions and 100 CIA agents between 1951 and 1961.
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